More "Odds and Ends"

Friday, Rich, Guillerme and I went back to the property in Needham, where we had started the large cleanup and trim job before it rained. We finished the cleanup and trimming and finally got around to edging the beds and putting down 10 yards of brown mulch. It was not enough to finish the yard so we will be back on Saturday to finish up and then next week, we will "slice seed the entire front lawn.

Saturday, my plans changed and I had to go with Guillerme, to mow the lawn at the property that is in the above picture. (Those are the wolf tree's, I spoke about in a prior post, you can see how their size, just dwarfs the Dogwood that is in full bloom.) Rich and another guy went back to finish the mulch job.

Guillerme and I, then headed over to the home that is used by the President of Babson College. We had to mow the lawn and go through all of the beds and weed and trim so everything looked very nice for this week's activities. This is a big week at Babson, and there is going to be a large tent, in the area of the blue stone patio, which is in the first picture on the left.

Odds and Ends Day

Today it is very overcast and misting out. A lot of the guys did not show up for work today so I am off doing "odds and ends" project solo.

The first thing, I did was go to a property and remove the Deer Fence, we installed last year at a property in Holliston. We had put this up around a lot of Canadian Hemlocks, that the deer just love to munch on during the winter.

Next, I to the President of Olin College's home to reset some bricks in the side walk. They had fallen into a hole, a mouse had made over the winter.

After that, I went to a home in Holliston to remove the mold that was growing between the blue stone walkway and put in some new stone dust. You can see the picture above and you can also see the weeping cherry in the background, that I had posted pictures of earlier, but now the flowers have fallen off of it.

I called Rich at noontime and he and I went and finished up the day by starting to mulch a condominium complex in Medfield.

Trip to renew my Driver's License

Well, today it was raining in the morning, so I decided to come to work a bit late because I had to renew my drivers license. Not a fun thing to do here in Massachusetts's, but I needed to get it done before my birthday this month. I tried to do it online, but I received a message, from the RMV, that my pic was taken more than 9 years ago and needed to have a new one taken at their office.

The Registry of Motor Vehicle's used to send out a letter informing you that it was time to renew but the state no longer does this. Why? So they can charge you a fine, for not doing so. The also do not notify you any longer when your plate registration is in need of renewing.

I am finding out more and more about how the state of Massachusetts is taxing it's residents to death, raising taxes, not notifying you, going after small businesses (like landscapers) every day. I guess we are back to being TAXACHUSETTS, but now they are being very sneaky about it. The police are out in force stopping everyone, so that they can have more money for the cities and towns in Massachusetts.

The trip to the RMV, was a lot more enjoyable than my last trip. New technology has sped up the process and I was in and out in 20 minutes. I also was able to sign up to Vote, what a great trip.

Landscape update of New Customer Property

We are redo the landscape at a new property today in Needham. It is also going to be raining soon, so we will not finish today. Rich and Guillerme are assisting me on this project. The property is next to the home the President of Olin College occupies.

The new owners moved in at the end of last year and we very busy getting settled in and put off this project until now. It is a big redo of the landscape, which the previous owners had let go for a few years.

Before it rains we are going to start the job by blowing off the lawn of winter debris as we are going to be "slice seeding" the entire front yard next week. Next, I started to trim back the ornamental bushes at the front of the house. Once Rich and Guillerme caught up with me they followed behind me and raked out the beds, cut down 3 trees that had fallen over due to the snow and lack of proper maintenance. We only have time to do the front bed and part of the side beds when the rain comes. The guys will only work for so long and then it is time to call it quits for the day. We will be back soon to continue.

Getting Ready for Graduation Ceremonies

The college graduation ceremonies, are going to be occurring next week on the 2 college campuses we take care off. So, today we had to go and spray a herbicide at the campus at Olin College. There are to be NO dandelions visible during the graduation ceremonies as they are very proud of their campus and want to show it off to the families of the graduating students.

We used a product that we buy at LESCO called "Speed Zone". We use this because it has the "2-4-d" herbicide chemical in it. It is very effective on dandelions and clover and broad leaf weeds that are in Lawns. We are also going to be adding "sticker" to the tank mixes, which is a product that makes the Speed Zone mixture a bit sticky, and adheres better to the waxy leaf's of the weeds.

This is going to be an all day job for 2 guys and myself. It takes a long time because we are always mixing the tanks with water and sometimes the location of the water is far away from where we are working. I will be riding the Permagren, sprayer and Rich and Guillerme will be using 3 gallon backpack sprayers.

Sod and overseed at Babson College property.

I had a new kid helping me today, Guillerme, at the Babson College property that is used by the President of the college.

We are going to be sodding an area along the front driveway, along the back driveway and the section between the 2 perenial beds which you can see in the pic at the left. We will also be spreading loam and seed behind the perenial gardens.

Hopefully this seed will be up and growing by May 15th. That is, when the graduation party is held, at this home. There will be a large outdoor tent, put over the blue stone patio area, for refreshments for the graduating class. This is a yearly project for us.

Large Mulching project in Sherborn

Today, I am with Rich and Guillerme putting down a large amount of mulch on a property that the other crew had been doing a lot of planting on. this property is in Sherborn and last year the owner was rehabbing the house. they had a circular driveway installed and a new planting was done in the bed on the inside of the driveway. (picture, is from last summer)

We will be using a dark brown pine bark mulch and it ended up that we used 37 yards of mulch here. It was a rainy cool day and my back acted up again, and again my SUNJING came to the rescue. It was a lot of work and we finished up around 5:30 PM.

There is more work to be done here by the other crew, a lawn area has to be loamed and seeded next week.

Southborough property finished up

Well we had to come back and finish up the property in Southboro to day. Rich helped me to put another 2 yards of loam down and seed it and roll it. We were finally finished with this project, sometimes it is easier to keep up with the yard maintenance on a yearly basis as opposed to bi-yearly.

I take Rich over to 2 more properties in Southborough, where he over seeds one and fertilizes the other. The last property for the day, is one that has large snowplow damaged that needs to be loamed and seeded. This will take us the rest of the day. My back started to act up again so I was happy that I had my Sunjing with me to apply to it. And lke magic the pain was gone in a few minutes, can't say enough about this fabulous product. I decided to start advertising here on my blog so other people can try it out.

Southborough cleanup continued......

Today, I am back at the property in Southborough, but this time there is only Rich with me. Rich will be mulching, while I repair some bricks that were torn up by the plows during the winter. I will also be trimming the Crabapple tree's in the front of the property and "tipping" back the White Pines going up the driveway.

(pic is close up of weeping cherry)

Once I am finished, I will leave Rich to continue mulching and go to Framingham to pick up 2 yards of loam, so that we can fill in the area's damaged by the snow plows this winter. We will be putting down some seed also. What we are using to day is Shade Seed from Lesco. It is comprised of; 44.2% Lacrosse Chewing Fescue, 34.65% FoxFire Creeping, 9.92% Shamrock Kentucky Bluegrass and 9.88% Gotham Hard Fescue.

Hopefully the owner will water this in every day so that she has a chance of seeing some growth before the house is put up for sale. Still kinda cool around here, though. We ended up not having enough to finish the job and will return once again, tomorrow to finsh this project.

Soutborough property going on the Market

I am with a different crew today, the crew that does the mowing, which starts tomorrow. We are at a property in Southborough, that is going to be put up for sale the first week in May. We will be doing a major clean up here, as not much was done to the property last year and the owner wants it to look nice for prospective buyers.

First we will be cleaning up the yard, by blowing off all of the debris from the past winter. Next the other guys will be raking out the beds and edging them. While they are doing that I will be trimming all of the bushes and trees.

We will start to mulch the property today, but we only brought 6 yards of mulch with us and that is not enough to finish the job. This will take us all day to accomplish. I will return on Tuesday to finish the job. The property is the one in the picture.